Killer Geezer: Transcendent, #1

By T. Jackson King

Jack Hansen is a 70 year old geezer living alone in Santa Fe whose mind is suddenly hit by a white flash. Moments later he is able to set fire to one mugger, melt down a second, knife a third and knock out a fourth. All before 6 a.m.! Jack likes the psychic powers that are suddenly making him powerful and almost invulnerable. But are these powers natural or supernatural? And why did they come to him? Follow his adventures and his discovery the world is not as it seems to be!

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Jackson King
• Release date: Jun 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781072221937

T. Jackson King

T. Jackson King (Tom) is a professional archaeologist and journalist. He writes hard science fiction, anthropological scifi, dark fantasy/horror and contemporary fantasy/magic realism--but that didn't begin until he was 38. Before then, college years spent in Paris and in Tokyo led Tom into antiwar activism, hanging out with some Japanese hippies and learning how often governments lie to their citizens. The latter lesson led him and a college buddy to publish the Shinjuku Sutra English language underground tabloid in Japan in 1967. That was followed by helping shut down the UT Knoxville campus in 1968 and a bus trip to Washington D.C. for the Second March on Washington where thousands demanded an end to the Vietnam War. Temporary sanity returned when Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that paid the bills, led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States, and helped him raise three kids. A funny thing happened on the way to normality. By the time he was 38 and doing federal arky work in Colorado, Tom's first novel STAR TRADERS was a stage play in his head that wouldn't go away. So he wrote it down. It got rejected. His next novel was published as RETREAD SHOP (Warner Books, 1988). It was off to the writing races and Tom's many voyages of imaginative discovery have led to 23 published novels, a book of poetry, and a conviction that when humans reach the stars, we will find them crowded with space-going aliens. We will be the New Kids On The Block. This theme appears in much of Tom's short fiction and novel writing. Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. His other writings can be viewed at http://www.tjacksonking.com.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

I didn’t want to become a geezer killer at the age of 70. My walk up Delgado Street on Santa Fe’s northeast side, heading for my breakfast coffee at a café on Canyon Road, was going nicely. I lived not far away in an apartment atop a garage on Calle Corvo, the place I’d called home lately. It had been 20 years since my wife had left me and my grown kids had disappeared to the East Coast. Did I feel angry at being left alone, at being laid off from my newspaper job? Was I upset at the unfairness of life? Yes, and no. After all, my social security was enough to get by on, along with bucks from odd jobs. And I had a few friends, including Mabel the waitress at the Café Loco, up where Canyon Road met East de Vargas Street.

In my entire life I had never killed anyone. Not in the Vietnam War which I avoided with a college deferment. Not in any later war. Not in a car wreck. Not even when I turned furious after my wife left me because a couple of high schoolers died at a gym party I was chaperoning because they snorted fentanyl powder that was too pure. When she blamed me for their deaths I’d been so angry I had smashed the wooden posts that framed the space between our kitchen and the dining room. But I had never hit my wife Sally nor my two kids Justin and Louise, who moved to the East Coast for jobs after Sally moved to live in Denver after our divorce. I still missed them. And Sally. Who had had other reasons for leaving me when I was honest with myself. But I did not want to think about that.

Thud. Thud-thud went my sneakers as they hit the dirty sidewalk concrete. My blue hoodie covered my head down to my waist, keeping me warm in the coolness of early spring. I breathed deep. A light wind blew past me, carrying the lemony smell of pine from neighborhood trees. It was a nice smell. It lightened my mood of melancholy. Mornings were the time I looked forward to. They were the times that helped me get past feeling ignored by life, feeling dumped on by my former employer and feeling without purpose. At 70 you should have some purpose to your life. Somehow. Someway. I looked ahead, seeing Canyon Road just a few blocks away. This route was one I was used to. There was a two story Pueblo-style home on my left, its separate brown stucco garage located at the property corner that met the sidewalk. A boarded up tattoo shop lay opposite the garage, with a narrow alley between the two.

No one else was out at 6 a.m. as I walked. Most folks in this neighborhood were either retired or homebound for some reason. Still, it was a beautiful neighborhood of older wood frame, brick and stucco homes that dated back 50 years or more, lined with pale green oaks, tall pines and pea green junipers. That presence of green nature was one reason I loved walking to my morning coffee. Nature usually calmed me. Nature spoke to me in ways no human could. Nature—

Hey! Give me your wallet!

I stopped walking. A young Hispanic guy had just come out of the alleyway. Dressed in a purple t-shirt, blue jeans and a purple headband, he had a menacing scowl on his face. His right hand held a switchblade. The knife moved like a snake, as if he was practicing disemboweling me.

Damn. Super damn. Muggers were rarely seen on the northeast side of town. But to be threatened with death for the meager contents of my wallet pissed me off. Made me choose defiance. Slowly I reached my left hand back and pulled out my wallet, moving it forward. When I saw the guy’s eyes lock onto the wallet, I reached my right hand back to my waist and grabbed the hunting knife I kept there in an old leather sheath. Carrying a knife pushed into the back of my pants was an old habit from roaming forests as an outdoors reporter for the Santa Fe Reporter news tabloid. I held the wallet out to the punk, feeling my anger at being mugged in my own neighborhood rise high. I rarely got mad at anyone, and usually that was stupid politicians. Whom I did my best to ignore, being retired and all. But when some punk pulls a knife on you for your money so he can buy more drugs, well, I’d had enough of smart mouth assholes.

Hey! Take it easy. Here’s my wallet. Not much in it.

There better be cash and cards or you’re gonna hurt bad!

The punk advanced, a switchblade in his right hand, his left going for the wallet. When he got within a few feet of me, I quickly thrust my knife into his belly, ducked under his knife swing at me, and pushed him back as I sliced upward. His white intestines spilled out. He screamed.

You fucker! You geezer! You, you hurt me! He fell to the ground, trying to hold in his guts. The spurting red blood made it hard to do.

The cherry red blood shook me. I’d never seen so much blood, not even during Sally’s delivery of our two kids. Now, a giant pool of it was rushing out from the punk’s belly. Nausea hit me. My stomach churned. My heart beat fast. Too fast.

With a gulp, I put back my wallet. Then leaned forward and shook my head. My money ain’t yours. And you just made a bad mistake.

The mugger spit at me. You geezer! My buddies will get you for this. You’ll die like a rat!

Something happened then. Something I’d never felt before. Fury. Deadly fury. It overcame me like a tidal wave.

I drove my knife into his forehead, cutting through the purple headband.

His brown eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to scream. But then his awareness faded as I moved the knife up and down in his brain, slicing his forebrain into sushi pieces. His body convulsed on the dirty ‘crete sidewalk the way a fish flip-flops when out of water. Then the body stopped jerking. More cherry red blood pooled out from his waist, soaking the purple belt he wore. The ammonia smell of piss joined with the shit odor of the punk’s bowels. It all assaulted my nose. Drove home reality. Dead. The punk was dead. And he deserved to be dead for trying to kill me.

But why had I stabbed him in the head? Why? I’d never been vicious in my life. I’d never been a bad guy trying to get ahead by stepping on others. I’d always thought of myself as one of the ‘good guys’. But now, what was I?

Hey! That’s our buddy you fucking geezer! You’re gonna die!

I looked up. Three young punks, two Hispanic and one Chinese, had rushed out of the alley. They ran down the sidewalk toward me. The middle punk, a Hispanic with a shaved head and tattoos around his neck, was the one who had screamed he was going to kill me. He waved a silver knife at me, his dark eyes filled with fury as he ran toward me.

I pulled my knife out of deado’s forehead. Then I stood straight and looked at tattoo guy, now just 30 feet from me. My heart beat faster. No shakes yet. But the sound of his death threat echoed in my ears like a bass drum. My entire body vibrated with the danger. Two death threats in just a few minutes. While my life did not flash before me, something did flash in my mind. The daylight flared like a searchlight aimed at me. My vision went blinding white. I blinked and blinked again. Suddenly I could see again. I saw them. The three punks rushing at me with death their intent. That was when it happened. I thought of middle punk surrounded by yellow and red flames.

Punk kid started burning up.

The flames flared out at his feet, rising up from his purple Adidas sneakers. His raggedy blue jeans caught fire. The flames grew longer. They crackled. Crackled like Ritz crackers breaking. The flames seemed alive. They swirled up his legs to his crotch and waist. By then he was screaming incoherently, his brown eyes wide as he looked down at the small bonfire that was engulfing him. He stopped running and tried patting out the fire. His dark brown hands caught fire. When he rubbed them against his white t-shirt with a movie image of a Sinaloa Cartel boss, the flames ran up his t-shirt. By then his two buddies were gaping in amazement, standing and looking at him. When the red and yellow flames reached his chin with its straggly black goatee, his screaming cut off as his throat and tongue combusted. He fell back onto the sidewalk concrete and became a blackened corpse that twitched as the flames covered all of him.

The Chinese buddy turned angry. His slanted eyes lifted from the blackened corpse and fixed on me. How did you do that! Antonio, Tony was our Jefe! He gestured at the dead punk at my feet. And that’s Mauricio! He wasn’t going to hurt you. It was just his initiation mugging. You can’t—

Do you and your buddy want some flames? I asked, gesturing at the burning pile of blackened bone that now flamed high as all the flesh burn to a charcoal crisp.

The smell of burning flesh, human flesh, is different from the smell of ribs being grilled on a barbecue. There is a sweet tinge to the odor, a smell that you know automatically ain’t right. But why was I challenging this punk? Why was I treating them like they were nothing? Was this a new me?

The angry kid spit at me. Mother fucker! I’m gonna kill you for Antonio and Mauricio!

He walked fast toward me, while the other Hispanic punk held back. But he egged him on.

Get him, Jory! Get the geezer bastard!

You bet I will!

The Chinese mugger pulled out a machete knife from the back of his pants. He pointed it at me. Then he began running.

Somehow I had set the first guy on fire. Should I do that again? Or was there another way to stop death as it ran toward me?

I held up my right hand, the one that had driven the knife into the first punk. My fingers framed the attacking mugger, the way photo geeks pretend to frame a picture scene. The Chinese guy was spanned by fingers. His head by my index finger, his purple Serrano sneakers by my thumb. I slowly closed my fingers, visualizing the punk shrinking down into a molten puddle of bones and flesh.

The Chinese guy stopped suddenly, as if he’d hit a brick wall. Then he began to shrink in on himself. He screamed. Then he looked at me with a pleading look as sudden awareness took hold.

No! No, no, daddy-oh! Oh stop! Pleassssse!

I didn’t stop. In my mind, I thought of him melting. My fingers came together slowly. He shrank-melted slowly, his head mostly intact. Then his jaw moved up until it was just below his two black eyes. By then the head was sinking down into a three-foot-wide puddle of dark red blood, pink flesh, white intestines, brown shit and stringy black hair. His head finally joined the melted mass as my index finger touched my thumb.

I looked at the last punk. A Hispanic guy who barely looked twenty years old. Younger than Justin. Young enough to briefly make me wonder at what I had just made happen.

People do not go up in flames or shrink into puddles of blood and gooey flesh.

But I’d made that happen, right after knifing a third guy.

How? Was I hallucinating? But if this was real, how was it real?

This kid was the last of the three who had rushed out of the alleyway. Tattoos adorned his hands. He wore a purple t-shirt. Maybe he belonged to the Main Street gang from the west side of town. His three dead buddies had also worn purple, either on their shoes or as a shirt or bandana. Now, his brown eyes were wide. Fear flared across his unshaven face.

What’s your name?

Juarez, he sputtered through trembling lips.

Do you want to be part of this? I gestured at the smoking pile of bones, the gooey oval of blood, guts and shit and the white guts of the first mugger.

Juarez’s dark brown face went pale as dirty snow. He backed up, raising his hands defensively. His knife had long ago been dropped as his buddy melted in front of him and the flames of the leader Antonio finally disappeared in a puff of black smoke. The blood of the first punk Mauricio had stopped flowing out of his cooling corpse.

No, no! No man, I ain’t a killer. I just wanted some buddies. I wasn’t gonna hurt you. We were just looking for quick cash. Man, oh man, don’t kill me!

His pleading broke through the fury that filled me. Broke through whatever the white light flash had made possible. Broke through enough for me to realize I, too, had had enough of killing. But he was in my way and a witness. I couldn’t get to my morning coffee with him just standing there. He’d call the cops once I disappeared. He might even call other gangbangers. Then I realized there were other options beyond killing.

I waved my right hand at Juarez like I was swatting a fly. That image was in my mind. The young punk went flying back toward the alley, his body hitting the dirty brown stucco side of the garage that stood next to the sidewalk. The thunking sound of his head hitting the stucco was not loud. His eyes closed. His legs buckled under him as he collapsed onto the sidewalk. Above him was the imprint of his body in the stucco. My casual wave had sent him against the garage with enough force to crack the stucco. His chest rose so I knew he was alive. Juarez the mugger punk was still alive. Then it hit me.

I had just killed three punks.

Bad people, yes. But people all the same.

My mouth felt dry. My ears were ringing. The smell of shit and fleshy smoke filled my nose. My heart beat too fast as the avoidance of being dead myself sank in.

How could this have happened?

Muggings close to or even on Canyon Road had been increasing lately. But for four punks to be hiding in an alleyway between a garage and a boarded-up tattoo shop was new. Not something that had ever happened before.

I’d just been out for my usual morning walk along the sidewalk of Delgado Street. I liked the early morning. No crowds. No loud street noises. No rushing cars. The street was always peaceful, like the forests I loved.

But not today.

Had I hallucinated all of this? Had it really happened? If it had, was this power supernatural? Or natural?

Looking down I saw the bloody body of the punk I had knifed. Mauricio. Lifting my eyes I saw the black charcoal of Antonio and the red goo of the Chinese guy Jory, all adorning the dirty concrete of this older residential neighborhood. It was six a.m., fortunately. No car traffic and no one else walking along Delgado. Looking aside at the house with the stucco garage, I did not see a vidcam mounting or a Ring doorbell. Most homes along this street did not have modern security vid systems. Sucking in my gut and telling my nose to ignore the odors of raunchy death, I picked up my feet and walked toward Canyon Road, not rushing or running, just feeling the need to get away from the smell of death. Hopefully no one had looked out their front windows and seen a six foot tall geezer wearing a blue hoodie, jeans, sneakers and sporting a full beard that was mostly white somehow kill three muggers and make senseless a fourth.

I breathed deep. The light wind of earlier still blew past me. The scents of oak, pine and juniper wafted over me. Reminding me I needed to smell something other than death. I needed friendly images in my mind, not bleeding, smoking and melted bodies. I needed to see the faces of Mabel, Carlos and the other regulars at the Café Loco. I needed my old normality.

Looking ahead I saw a twenty year old Caddy drive along Canyon Road headed for its intersection with Paseo de Peralta. My morning coffee was awaiting me at Café Loco, which lay a block and a half up Canyon. Coffee. A friendly place. Normal routine. Maybe the smell of fresh roasted coffee would drive away the memory of death odors. Maybe. But would anything drive away my ability to cause death with a thought, a hand gesture or the image of the wind tossing a gangbanger into a stucco wall?

I didn’t know. I just knew my first feelings of fury at besting the punk mugger who’d threatened me with a knife were righteous. People of any age should not fear to walk the streets of their home town. And geezers, so often assumed to be frail and an easy mugging target, needed a sense of security. Maybe my besting of four gang-affiliate muggers would cause the punks to back off. I hoped so. I needed my old life back. While I did not like being lonely, being ignored and being taken for granted by the younger crowd, it, it was better than being a killer. In my mind I prayed to the Goddess that I would not again have to kill. I did not like my new mind powers. And I needed to figure out how to use them for good, if that were possible. Could I heal with my mind? Maybe today I would find out. But first, coffee called. As did my few friends.

––––––––

Mabel put down my usual coffee in front of me as I sat in my regular spot at a small table in a back corner of the café. Cream and stevia sweetener were close by.

That all you need, Jack?

I looked up at her. Mabel wore a beige brown dress and blouse that looked like a restaurant uniform, but wasn’t. Her pudgy face had a pink glow to it as she smiled down at me, her green eyes bright. A bit stocky but offering everyone a friendly smile. Like me she was Anglo and paler than most New Mexicans. Looking years younger than her late 50s, Mabel was a café veteran. Twenty-six years here. Raised her kids on low wages and good tips. Sent them off to UNM in Albuquerque. And showed everyone the pictures of her three grandkids. Including me, since I counted as a regular after ten years of showing up for early morning coffee. The spice of the gods and the rescue of ailing bones is coffee. I inhaled the aroma of fresh ground Columbian beans, felt my heart slow down to almost normal and told my mouth to be patient. Quenching my thirst would come soon enough.

Well, maybe one of those white-iced donuts would be a good chaser to this coffee.

She lifted her dark brown eyebrows. Donuts are not the healthiest way to start the day, sugar. Maybe some bacon and— she paused as she recalled how I hate eggs —and maybe some toast? Lorenzo baked fresh loaves of bread last night.

My fingers were still shaking from the adrenalin rush aftereffects of the punk takedown. And I felt ravenous. Hungrier than I ever recalled at breakfast time. Was hunger a side effect of using psychic powers? Telling my fingers to be still, I lifted my right hand from my lap and reached for the cream. I returned her smile. Sure. That sounds better than one of Lorenzo’s donuts. Thanks!

Mabel gave me a nod, winked at me and turned away to refill a nearby customer’s coffee cup.

Her curly brown hair jiggled as she walked, confident in her ability to be the best damn waitress anywhere north of Albuquerque. Plus she knew the lingo spoken by the under-30 crowd today, a lingo I had tried to ignore despite hearing conversations as I walked through the Railyard to the Violet Crown theater, on my way to a movie. At least the folks at Jose’s barber shop were old enough to speak normal English, albeit with a Spanish accent. Jose’s place was next on my morning rounds. Getting a haircut and wet shave were two things to be enjoyed when you are older. Along with a few cups of the ambrosia of the gods!

Sitting back in my chair I poured cream into my cup. Then added two packets of stevia. Then I stirred the concoction. Outside came the wail of police sirens.

Looking through the large bay window of the café, I saw two black police cruisers coming down Canyon Road fast. No doubt they were heading for Delgado Street. Someone must have gone out early to pick up their copy of the New Mexican newspaper. Just my luck. Bad as always. Ever since I’d been laid off from my job as an outdoors newsman for the Santa Fe Reporter, my luck had been bad. With only Social Security to sustain me, and odd jobs painting someone’s fence or starting up their swamp cooler for the summer, I lived on the knife edge of survival. Well, this morning I had shown them. The punks. The bad asses. The nasty people who love to scam and take advantage of regular folks of any age. I’d shown them. Even if they had yet to hear the news of four gangbanger punks down and out just off Canyon Road.

Mabel glanced that way. Wonder what has their shorts in a bunch?

Uh, my refill? muttered Carlos, another regular who occupied one of the two-seat tables that lined the back wall of the café. He nodded at his empty cup. Which sat next to his empty plate of bacon and huevos rancheros that he had consumed before I walked in.

Mable jerked her attention down to him. Her green eyes squinted. She moved the coffee pitcher to above his empty cup and poured slowly. There you go, Carlos! Cup number three at no extra charge.

Carlos grunted. Four other regulars nearby smiled at Mabel’s small talk. They knew Carlos was a grouch, though a polite grouch. The man was in his late sixties, still had a head of black hair and he liked to twist the ends of his handlebar mustache. As if he were an outlaw from the 1880s. He wasn’t. In truth Carlos was a retired nuclear engineer who had worked at the Los Alamos lab. Hispanic he was and a smart Ph.D. he forever would be. The few times we’d chatted he had lost me when he got to talking about the different spin flavors of quarks.

I looked over the four over as the siren wails faded. Those smiling at Mabel and Carlos were black as sin Angelina, bald-headed Leroy, sexy Christine who was a red-headed clone of Lucy from I Love Lucy, and overweight Petros the Greek. They knew me. I knew them. Knew their histories as much as they wished to share. I’d even taken Christine out on a date to Violet Crown. That was when I learned she was a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian who just liked hanging with a guy as she checked out the younger chicks. The date had ended with a friendly kiss, a smile and a swat on my butt as she walked past me, aiming to put the make on a young Hispanic gal who looked like a student at St. John’s College.

These folks were my buddies. Almost friends after ten years. If anyone tried to harm any of them, I would protect them with every power at my disposal.

But what were the rules for using the power to set someone aflame, to melt someone into a puddle of flesh and goo, to cause someone to fly away from you? Did they have to be bad people? Did I have to feel personally threatened, or could I use my new powers to protect good people, folks like my café buddies? Most vital, how had these powers come to me?

I’d never had any mental abilities beyond a near photographic memory and the smarts obtained through hard study at college and at different jobs. I could drive a car even though I didn’t own one. I could speak a little French and Spanish. I had normal strength for a geezer of 70. And I never hurt small animals for fun, unlike some lunatics I saw on TV or heard about in the newspaper. While I made a point to stomp on spiders, that was the limit of my intentional harming mode. At least until this morning.

What should I do with this mind power? And did it give me abilities I had yet to discover? Could I float in the air? Could I walk through walls? Could I heal instead of harming? Could I—

Here’s your bacon and toast, honey!

Shaking away guilty thoughts I smiled at Mabel. Thanks, pretty gal. Oh, I’ll take a refill on my coffee, please?

Somehow during my watching and wondering I’d drained the first cup of coffee. Must be the Columbian aroma that had auto-piloted my right hand.

Sure babe!

As Mabel poured me a new cup of steaming black invigoration, I reached out for a piece of bacon. My left hand did not shake. Nor my right hand.

Somehow I was back to normal.

But it was a totally new normal.

A new siren wail sounded. Looking up I saw an ambulance with the Santa Fe Ambulance logo on it. It was coming down from Peralta, headed to where three bodies lay dead and one guy was unconscious. It was followed by a white coroner’s van and three more black Santa Fe Police cruisers.

I munched the bacon, reached for the piece